Millions of Bodies (1)
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Andreas Gursky


A Frenchmen (unless he is abroad) cannot classify French faces; doubtless he perceives faces in common, but the abstraction of these repeated faces (which is the class to which they belong) escapes him. The body of his compatriots, invisible by it's quotidian situation is a language he can attach to no code; the déjà vu of faces has for him no intellectual value; beauty, if he encounters it, is never for him an essence, the summit or the fulfillment of a research, the fruit of an intelligible maturation of the species, but only a piece of luck, a protuberance from the platitude, a departure from repetition.

- Roland Barthes

To be without "code" is to be without individuality, in relation to recognition within a space of multiple bodies. Some guy on the street, remains some guy to your perception because there is not "code" to abstract him from the mass.


Andreas Gursky


Particles (or agents, or individuals) are introduced within an environment and move more or less at random. The crossing of paths between particles generates "code" to where a basis of relations can be established. The more frequent the path crossing the stronger the "magnetism." Particles soon will want to cross paths and want to intersect with the familiar faces, inevitably forming groups of swarms (une tribu).

Wed, Jan 16, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Emergence and Navigating Space

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